Amanda Vanstone: pragmatic or compassionate?

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The politics of immigration has been transformed since Vanstone succeeded Ruddock, writes Russell Skelton.

What moves Amanda Vanstone? It is one of the most asked but seldom answered questions of this election campaign.

Critics depict the Immigration Minister as a cynical pragmatist doing the Prime Minister's bidding. Supporters see her as a person of concealed compassion working to water down policies she privately holds to be abhorrent.

Neither view is particularly accurate.

To be sure, Vanstone has looked for pragmatic solutions in situations where her predecessor, Philip Ruddock, stubbornly refused. But there is little evidence, on the public record at least, to suggest she is overtly cynical. She is a forthright advocate of mandatory detention and when the odd boatload of asylum seekers has turned up she has backed John Howard right down to the low-water mark.

As for being compassionate, her record remains decidedly mixed. A common perception persists among migration agents, lawyers and health-care professionals that her compassion is strictly rationed, served up to asylum seekers in long-term detention and denied to refugees living in the community, even those with well-documented histories of torture and persecution. Many Tamils from strife-torn Sri Lanka, who arrived with identification papers, are being given short shrift by the minister and her department.

There is no doubt that in the 12 months she has presided over the immigration portfolio, the senator from South Australia has defused and substantially redefined the immigration debate, so much so that it has barely rated a mention in the campaign.

She has achieved this by significantly changing the atmospherics rather than the policy. Gone is Ruddock's pugnacious language, his confrontational approach where the goal was to put people smugglers out of business.

Vanstone has redefined the debate by significantly changing the atmospherics rather than the policy.

From Vanstone there is no constant talk about deporting failed asylum seekers back to Tehran. She doesn't insist that Afghanistan is a safe country to return to, and she has issued a large number of visas to long-term detainees traumatised by years behind wire. She moved to defuse the untenable situation on Nauru and in an unprecedented step allowed temporary protection visa holders to apply for permanent residency, a decision that infuriated Ruddock.

Conspicuously, she has significantly reduced the numbers in detention. Hardly a week goes by without a family being issued with some sort of visa: a TPV, a bridging visa with benefits or, as is becoming more common, a permanent visa. Many Sabian Mandaeans from Iran, for years denied visas under Ruddock, have been released.

When Vanstone took over, 1114 men, women and children were in detention. Today there are about 900, including 139 women and about 60 children. A year ago there were 131 Iranians in detention, today fewer than 90. Rejected Afghans have had their applications for asylum reassessed and many, including some initially accused of being Pakistani, have been released.

It has been a remarkable 12 months, with 417 visa applications being dispensed from the minister's office. But does all this make Amanda Vanstone a more compassionate, a more reasonable person than Philip Ruddock, indeed a subverter of the Howard hardline on refugees?

The short answer is no. Nothing in what she has done subverts the policy, or even significantly changes it. She has simply adjusted its implementation to match the changing political environment.

Long before Ruddock was moved on, pressure was building inside the Howard Government for a less rigid approach. Not only had a group of Liberal backbenchers threatened to cross the floor over amendments to the Immigration Act if steps were not taken to remove women and children from mainland detention centres, but National Party MPs, including Deputy Prime Minister John Anderson, were pressing for moderation and flexibility, particularly in the issuing of TPVs.

With boats no longer arriving and a tight election looming, John Howard took the opportunity to remove a powerful negative from the public debate. And that is precisely what Vanstone has done, without in any way compromising the fundamental tenet of the policy: mandatory indefinite detention for failed asylum seekers who arrive by sea without identification papers.

It is difficult to escape the conclusion that what moves Amanda Vanstone is the very opposite to what drove Philip Ruddock: a search for pragmatic solutions and expedient outcomes. This is not to argue that she lacks compassion. But it is worth remembering that hundreds of asylum seekers - many with children born in Australia - with well-documented claims, still live in the community with no work rights. They are yet to be touched by ministerial compassion in the form of a successful visa application.

Is it too cynical to suggest they could conceivably improve their chances of obtaining a visa from Minister Vanstone by moving into a detention centre?